You only have to look at the graph below showing sea level rise since 1880 to see that it has accelerated from about 1mm/year at the end of the 19th century to about 3mm/year at present.(from CSIRO).

If you take a closer look at recent sea level rise you’ll see that it has been very consistent, only deviating from the trend line by about 10mm at any time.

So if you were unscrupulous, and wanted to try to make it look like sea level rise had decelerated what could you do? You could split the series at a point where sea level was above the trend line and compare trends before and after. this is what Klaus-Eckart Puls did (green line added by me):

Of course, you could achieve the opposite effect by splitting at a point in time where sea level was below the trend line. Note that the trend for the first half, 3.5mm/year isn’t significantly different from the overall trend and that the latest measurement lies on the trend fitted to the first part of the data (the green line above).

Related

Comments

Bernard I am not making any claims about the tides at all, and unlike SD have no measurements or anything to go back to. It was just an observation in respect to your question. For all I know the tides may have coincided with storm surges or unusual swells. However the point is that there are places in Australia where people have built in locations that can be affected by king tides.

But that said, I am now curious so might try to dig up some relevant info about those tides. I was just talking to my 84 year old dad and he agrees that it was not unusual for the big tides to flood onto the esplanade there.

As to whether it is possible to make any comparisons, well… Things have changed and in any case, given that SLR around that area has been less than the global average I doubt that it’d be noticeable at the local level.

Bernie, I have supplied you with all the details you need to work out for yourself what has been happening at Cleveland Point over the last nearly 80 years supported by a list of cyclones and tide surge heights over that period and a photograph of the last HAT there.

Eh? You make the claim, you should do the working and show the path of your thinking.

Science isn’t a flat pack where you tell the end-user to assemble it themselves. Heck, you’re not even selling a flat-pack – your product is nothing more than a Maurits Escher concept of science that looks interesting at first glance, but once assessed is patently apparent for the illusion that it is.

Never once have you ever put together a cogent and coherent argument based on data and empirical evidence. Not once.

And no, a couple of holiday photos and some front-veranda stories don’t qualify.

And you’ve only supplied the 1946 date – you still haven’t explained which other dates have flooding tides that demonstrate that sea level is now decreasing, nor have you addressed* the implication of any early 20th century king tide height being lower than this month’s. You have by no stretch of any imagination less fevered than your own supplied anything resembling a testable body of data.

*You’re really scared of that last one aren’t you Drongo – your own logic would render your claim refuted if you did answer.

It is clear to a normal person that king tides have not only NOT risen in recent years in Moreton Bay but have actually fallen.

Bernie, I have supplied you with all the details you need to work out for yourself what has been happening at Cleveland Point over the last nearly 80 years supported by a list of cyclones and tide surge heights over that period and a photograph of the last HAT there.

Eh? You make the claim, you should do the working and show the path of your thinking.

Science isn’t a flat pack where you tell the end-user to assemble it themselves. Heck, you’re not even selling a flat-pack – your product is nothing more than a Maurits Escher concept of science that looks interesting at first glance, but once assessed is patently apparent for the illusion that it is.

Never once have you ever put together a cogent and coherent argument based on data and empirical evidence. Not once.

And no, a couple of holiday photos and some front-veranda stories don’t qualify.

And you’ve only supplied the 1946 date – you still haven’t explained which other dates have flooding tides that demonstrate that sea level is now decreasing, nor have you addressed* the implication of any early 20th century king tide height being lower than this month’s. You have by no stretch of any imagination less fevered than your own supplied anything resembling a testable body of data.

*You’re really scared of that last one aren’t you Drongo – your own logic would render your claim refuted if you did answer.

It is clear to a normal person that king tides have not only NOT risen in recent years in Moreton Bay but have actually fallen.

To set the record straight. The JM Gregory paper published in the Journal of Climate, “Twentieth-century global-mean sea-level rise: is the whole greater than the sum of the parts”, did not say there was no link between global warming and sea level rises as initially incorrectly reported, and corrected, in The Australian.

Attempts to contact the authors both prior to and after publication were unsuccessful.

I like it – scientists don’t take calls from The Australian anymore.
Looks like they are learning.
Lloyd is forced to copy and paste chunks of text from Realclimate seeing as no scientist will talk to him.

Uh, except for the scientists out on the fringe who want some attention – Lloyd’s obviously not learning anything.

I didn’t VW, I just eyeballed them. Though it’s hard to tell from the scale – in some cases if you take the start and end of the series you could argue for some slight change upwards. I looked at a few others and got similar results.

Of course, given that the graph at the head of this post suggests something like 200mm over 100-150 years, the effects aren’t going to be especially clear on those plots. Most of those show MSL for each gauge as swinging over a range greater than 200mm anyway.

So… what have we learned after umpteen pages? Dunno about you, but this is what I got.

1. MSL in SE Qld has not changed substantially in the past 100 years. In any case, a rise of maybe 150mm or so for 100 years is unlikely to be noticed at the local level given the tidal fluctuations.

2. SD’s benchmarks probably do show that king tides have not increased noticeably in the past 50 or so years for the location in question, but given we do not know enough about the various local conditions it’s not possible to draw any conclusions from that. Other than to say that so far at least, SLR on the SE Qld coast has had little noticeable impact.

3. The ocean is largely ‘level’, but it varies by up to 1-2 metres from the geoid. That is very smooth at large scales, but SLR of .2 of a metre over 100 years is easily contained within that variation. Thus, changes at any particular tide gauge don’t tell us anything much about changes at a gauge elsewhere.

4. The case for ‘acceleration’ in recent decades is not clearly shown for me.

Indeed DBB. But while Lovelock et al may claim it, we don’t know how they derived that value (or put another way, I’ve not read their paper so if there is any actual data rather than a simple statement I am not aware of it).

Looking at the actual data you have provided, I can’t see anything happening there. MSL varies around 300-400mm over the period of the record, but not in an inexorable rising fashion. For example, the first few months of 1966 show an MSL of around 1300, while the same period in 2011 shows about the same. The first few months of 1957 – a short series – shows around 1100mm. So, there *could* conceiveably be a difference of 200mm but given that the short 1957 series is notably lower than everything else, there may be other factors at play.

What is clear is that for the period of the most complete data – 1966 to the present – there is remarkable stability.

Interestingly, if Lovelock’s numbers are derived over a longer period, eg 1880 to the present, and the latest decades show a largely stable MSL, then what we see is what I originally suggested from the original graph for this post.

That is, SLR ‘accelerated’ in the early part of the record, and not so much recently. All of which certainly does little to support notions of runaway SLR and tipping points, nicht wahr?

From Lovelock et al.: “The long-term rate
of sea level rise (from 1984 and calculated as the
arithmetic mean of all values in the record) was
1.982 mm y-1 (Figure 2A), whereas the rate of rise
since 2000 was 2.358 mm y-1 (Figure 2B), which
is similar to the global average sea level rise
(Church and others 2001).”

So… what have we learned after umpteen pages? Dunno about you, but this is what I got.

1. MSL in SE Qld has not changed substantially in the past 100 years.

Gawd you’re slow Blot. As is Drongo.

I and others have linked a number of times to maps that show that sea level in the Brisbane area is only slightly increasing – I can’t be shagged trying to find the previous posts so look carefully at figure 2 here. You’ll see that mean sea level near Brisbane increased by about 1 mm per year.

2. SD’s benchmarks probably do show that king tides have not increased noticeably in the past 50 or so years for the location in question, but given we do not know enough about the various local conditions it’s not possible to draw any conclusions from that.

Drongo’s sites do not show anything about trends in king tides because there is no assurance of quality at all, especially with respect to accounting for confounding factors, and because there is no documented data.

Further, even if Drongo had documented king tide height in a quality-assured manner, these points alone would not confirm or refute sea level rise.

Had Drongo also recorded over the last 70 years all of the confounding phenomena that affect sea level, and had he performed an appropriate analysis of the data such that the confounders were properly accounted for, then all he might have been able to do would be to comment on the relationship between king tide level and local sea level – he cannot infer anything about global sea level without further data.

What Drongo’s stories certainly do not indicate is that sea level has decreased by between 36 cm to 1.5 metres, as he seems to think it does. Drongo has demonstrated though that he is supremely resistant to consideration of those confounding factors that even you acknowledge are insufficiently documented… confounders that are in the short term orders of magnitude greater than the sea level rise caused by global warming.

4. The case for ‘acceleration’ in recent decades is not clearly shown for me.

It won’t be if you persist in refusing to consider the global data record.

It is not just my 30-odd personal observations over periods ranging from 35 to 70 years that agree on no SLR in the Moreton Bay region.

But there is this coincidence that EVERYONE I have ever asked who has been involved with the sea, both in business and residentially, over even greater periods of time all agree wit me.

Like someone who has just retired from a boat slipping business after 57years. A business that relied entirely on the depth of water at his slipway as to how big a vessel he could repair or service. A business that had to be aware whether tides were springing or neaping so that when they slipped a boat worth possibly a million dollars and did the work required, they could then get it back in the water and back to earning its keep as soon as possible.

This makes such a person extremely focussed on sea levels for all of those 57 years.

If you would like to come and meet him I’m sure he would be more than happy to give you the benefit of his observations.

The blockquote means I was quoting someone directly. Not you. So, who was I addressing, pet? And you can’t work out which paper is being referred to, can you, you poor old thing?

‘Wet the bed’ – the psychosexual aspect of Denial is going to be a rich field for future psych-research. Testicles, bed-wetting, faeces – it’s enough to potentially revive the fortunes of the Freudians!

Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Spangly, but slipways are designed with variations of sea level in mind – they tend to extend at least a couple of metres above mean sea level and a couple of metres below it.
Once again you are using a proxy for sea level rise which is completely inappropriate because it can’t possibly give you an accurate measurement.

And again, you’re on about measuring sea level rise using two data points:
– one vague memory
– one vague photo

Interesting with you Ds, after heated denial of my obs for nearly 2000 comments, you not only can’t produce any of your own obs but you can’t produce any scientific obs to support your argument.

What, you don’t accept the stringently-controlled scientific collection of sea level and tide data by thousands of scientists and technicians? The observance of the results of tens of thousands of controlled collection of data points? By this logic reporting the weather is useless unless the meteorologist takes a photo of the sun or of the rain or of the wind.

Perhaps you really do mean that a happy snap is the only way to record sea level… This is Hanran Street, Townsville, 3 February 2011. It wasn’t even a king tide, and yet the sea level is certainly higher that you describe in your stories. By your logic this proves sea level rise.

Oh, you don’t like it because there’s a storm lurking around somewhere? But you don’t account for meteorological phenomena such as barometric pressure* in your pseudoscientific world, so why should I when you demand a photograph?

It is not just my 30-odd personal observations over periods ranging from 35 to 70 years that agree on no SLR in the Moreton Bay region.

Oh, so it’s 30 observations now? For most of the last three years it was one undated observation at the Nerang river wall , and then just recently it was another at the lighthouse in Moreton Bay.

As to the rest of your acquaintances’ observations, let’s see the records. That’s all we’re asking for. Some data. Not memories coloured by conservative ideology, anti-intellectual prejudice, and the erosion of time.

Heck, you do realise that the very questioning of these people by you, tainted as you are by a particular bias, can introduce false memories? There’s a body of literature devoted to this very phenomenon, and it’s one reason why reliance on anecdotal recountings requires specialised training, scrupulous survey design, stringent analysis protocols, and extensive re-testing to account for unexpected contamination.

Too much of a coincidence, do you think?

Too much of an overweening Dunning-Kruger confidence in your own non-scientific abilities, Drongo.

Time you packed it in.

Why? Are you starting to feel the heat Drongo?

[*Nor do you account for oceanographic phenomena such as current magnitude and direction, or climatic phenomena such as El Niño/La Niña alterations of regional sea level, but I think that’s been noticed once or twice before…]

Interesting with you Ds, after heated denial of my obs for nearly 2000 comments, you not only can’t produce any of your own obs but you can’t produce any scientific obs to support your argument.

What, you don’t accept the stringently-controlled scientific collection of sea level and tide data by thousands of scientists and technicians? The observance of the results of tens of thousands of controlled collection of data points? By this logic reporting the weather is useless unless the meteorologist takes a photo of the sun or of the rain or of the wind.

Perhaps you really do mean that a happy snap is the only way to record sea level… This is Hanran Street, Townsville, 3 February 2011. It wasn’t even a king tide, and yet the sea level is certainly higher that you describe in your stories. By your logic this proves sea level rise.

Oh, you don’t like it because there’s a storm lurking around somewhere? But you don’t account for meteorological phenomena such as barometric pressure* in your pseudoscientific world, so why should I when you demand a photograph?

It is not just my 30-odd personal observations over periods ranging from 35 to 70 years that agree on no SLR in the Moreton Bay region.

Oh, so it’s 30 observations now? For most of the last three years it was one undated observation at the Nerang river wall , and then just recently it was another at the lighthouse in Moreton Bay.

As to the rest of your acquaintances’ observations, let’s see the records. That’s all we’re asking for. Some data. Not memories coloured by conservative ideology, anti-intellectual prejudice, and the erosion of time.

Heck, you do realise that the very questioning of these people by you, tainted as you are by a particular bias, can introduce false memories? There’s a body of literature devoted to this very phenomenon, and it’s one reason why reliance on anecdotal recountings requires specialised training, scrupulous survey design, stringent analysis protocols, and extensive re-testing to account for unexpected contamination.

Too much of a coincidence, do you think?

Too much of an overweening Dunning-Kruger confidence in your own non-scientific abilities, Drongo.

Time you packed it in.

Why? Are you starting to feel the heat Drongo?

[*Nor do you account for oceanographic phenomena such as current magnitude and direction, or climatic phenomena such as El Niño/La Niña alterations of regional sea level, but I think that’s been noticed once or twice before…]

“What, you don’t accept the stringently-controlled scientific collection of sea level and tide data by thousands of scientists and technicians?”

Do you mean the gravy meter or the Brissy TG with all the bits missing?

“Oh, so it’s 30 observations now?”

You don’t pay attention do you bern? How many times have I told you about properties I have been involved with at Biggera Waters, Oates Estate and Runaway Bay and these are all much closer to the seaway than Chevron Is. Chevron just happened to be the oldest benchmark. I still own a place at Oatland Esp, looking out through the seaway and that was developed in the mid ’60s, about 47 yeatrs ago. Biggera Waters followed and Runawat Bay in the very late ’60s.
I was involved in all those developments and the developers even used my ketch with me down below and Sir James on deck for the cameras. I have told you but you choose not to remember that the developers had to build the sea walls to the king tide datum at that time. Those king tides likewise surpassed those wall heights at first yet they don’t today.

I have also told you [yet you choose to forget] of jetty builders, boat builders and other businesses apart from slipways that have been incredibly connected to and interested in SLs around MB who will all tell you that THERE IS NO SLR.

“Why? Are you starting to feel the heat Drongo?”

It’s just that the stupidity and ignorance of your obtuse posts [particularly when you double up each time] become a little tiresome.

How many times have I told you about properties I have been involved with at Biggera Waters, Oates Estate and Runaway Bay and these are all much closer to the seaway than Chevron Is.

Why don’t you tell us exactly how many times? And whilst you’re at it, link to each occasion – just to corroborate your claim, of course…

Those king tides likewise surpassed those wall heights at first yet they don’t today.

And you’ve been pointed to the river dredging, the relocation of the mouth, the damming of the Nerang, the alteration of drainage and riverbank characteristics, and any number of other confounders that all contribute to the height that a tide achieves in a river, but youjust won’t let the fucking facts permeate into that wizened pea that you call a brain.

Even an Irish setter puppy can be toilet trained, but getting realisation to take root in your head appears to be one step to far. Your parents must have been delighted that they were able to move you on from nappies, when that day finally came.

It’s just that the stupidity and ignorance of your obtuse posts [particularly when you double up each time] become a little tiresome.

Well, if you weren’t so bloody dense, and so completely and utterly refractory to understanding that your observations are contaminated by multiple confounding factors, thus rendering your conclusion about sea level invalid, we wouldn’t have this ad nauseum repetition of rubbing your nose in the shit that you persist in dumping here in public.

Yes bern, we’ve had this from you ad nauseum too. It’s called “don’t raise the bridge, lower the river”. As though opening the seaway can lower max SLs.

Comprehension is not your friend, is it Drongo?

The factors I mention don’t lower sea level, they affect river level – either by affecting how water flows down the river, or how it surges in from the sea.

You can persist in pretending that these factors don’t exist, but the truth of them will not go away. None of the spectators here are sucked in by your “look, squirrel” antics – unless of course they’re as illogically-wired as are you.

…can I make an appointment for you with some of these business people?

Only after you first visit Jean Palutikof, who is the director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility just a few kilometres from your river wall on Chevron Island. We’ve discussed this before, remember? You have a whole lot of explaining to put to her, correcting the massive mistake that she and thousands of her professional oceanographic colleagues have made.

Or are you too scared to front up to a woman who is demonstrably much smarter than you? That is the only reason I can come up with for your avoidance of correcting the record… you’re so fervent about how right you are that it can only be a terrible gynophobia that is keeping you from overturning a whole discipline of science.

You will find them very smart people with minds of their own who don’t agree with me on many things so you can even carry on your rants about me and they won’t mind a bit.

Excellent. So when I explain to them that local and regional confounders superimpose on sea level they should understand that raw king tide heights do not reflect global sea level trends.

Perhaps once they understand this they can go back to you and try in their own turns to set you straight.

…is that sort of reality too confronting for you?

Not at all. In the past some of my positions have involved explaining complicated and politically-charged issues to ideologically lay people. The smart ones always understand and are prepared to expand their world views.

It’s the stupid ones who are the problem. What the Flying Spaghetti Monster hasn’t put there humans cannot improve on.

Yes bern, we’ve had this from you ad nauseum too. It’s called “don’t raise the bridge, lower the river”. As though opening the seaway can lower max SLs.

Comprehension is not your friend, is it Drongo?

The factors I mention don’t lower sea level, they affect river level – either by affecting how water flows down the river, or how it surges in from the sea.

You can persist in pretending that these factors don’t exist, but the truth of them will not go away. None of the spectators here are sucked in by your “look, squirrel” antics – unless of course they’re as illogically-wired as are you.

…can I make an appointment for you with some of these business people?

Only after you first visit Jean Palutikof, who is the director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility just a few kilometres from your river wall on Chevron Island. We’ve discussed this before, remember? You have a whole lot of explaining to put to her, correcting the massive mistake that she and thousands of her professional oceanographic colleagues have made.

Or are you too scared to front up to a woman who is demonstrably much smarter than you? That is the only reason I can come up with for your avoidance of correcting the record… you’re so fervent about how right you are that it can only be a terrible gynophobia that is keeping you from overturning a whole discipline of science.

You will find them very smart people with minds of their own who don’t agree with me on many things so you can even carry on your rants about me and they won’t mind a bit.

Excellent. So when I explain to them that local and regional confounders superimpose on sea level they should understand that raw king tide heights do not reflect global sea level trends.

Perhaps once they understand this they can go back to you and try in their own turns to set you straight.

…is that sort of reality too confronting for you?

Not at all. In the past some of my positions have involved explaining complicated and politically-charged issues to ideologically lay people. The smart ones always understand and are prepared to expand their world views.

It’s the stupid ones who are the problem. What the Flying Spaghetti Monster hasn’t put there humans cannot improve on.

In case you hadn’t noticed bern, this thread is about accelerating SLR. What does JP have to do with that?

Has she made a particular stand on this subject?

Oh, indeed she has Drongo. You’d know that if you’d ever heard her speak.

And given that she’s within walking distance of your river wall, you should be looking up their seminar program and taking every opportunity to hear Professor Palutikof and her colleagues give presentations.

Does she have a particular insight into SLs from her own observations and measurements?

Why won’t you ask her yourself? Are you so insecure about your claims that you are afraid to approach a lady and correct her and her colleagues’ misapprehensions about what the world’s sea level is doing?

The people I have suggested you talk to all are vitally interested and involved with SLs yet you don’t want to know about them.

I’ve never said that. In fact I said quite the opposite – “[n]ot at all” was the phrase I used in my last post, in fact.

You are verballing me. You are constructing another Drongo Straw Man over which to drape those distracting squirrels. You’re a tendentious old bastard aren’t you?

On top of that you have no personal observations of your own yet argue that you are very aware of SLs.

You’re also a doddering forgetful old bastard Drongo.

I spoke of changes to tides and shore flooding in my own part of the world three years ago when you first sprayed this ridiculous fairy story of yours. Go have a look and see if you’re clever enough to dig up the posts.

But really, do I have to have my own photo album of river walls, and the uncritical remembrances of anonymous folk from over half a century ago, before I can engage in the discussion about sea level rise?

You’re off your rocker.

I might even be able to persuade some coastal engineers and scientists to talk to you who are also of the opinion that SLR is not happening in SEQ.

Ah, so you’re slipping now, hey Drongo?

So it’s no longer “sea level decrease”, and it’s now just in south east Queensland?

You can fly me to Queensland, and put me up for the duration, and accompany me to see Jean Palutikof and her colleagues, and we’ll even bring your “coastal engineers and scientists” along for the excursion so that everyone can get the best opinions.

I will enthusiastically talk to your folk, and they can benefit from expert opinion at the same time. You can bring your photos, and your friend with the slip can bring his stories, and we can get it all sorted out once and for all. I’ll even bring a video camera and a digital voice recorder so that nothing is lost to posterity. I’ll be diligent in making sure that every second is posted on the internet for all to view.

Great idea Drongo! let’s do it!

Or, if your knees are starting to shake again (ooh, scarey smart girls!), you can invite your “coastal engineers and scientists” to make their statements here and we can see the depth of the “evidence” on your side.

This is pathetic even by the low standards of the WUWT gang! The “adjustments” between versions are the addition of extra data on to the end of the data set. As you add data to the end of a data set like this it is perfectly normal to have small (note the y-axis on their graph) changes in the trend. He’s even linked to all of the data files so you could have seen this for yourself.

What a joke!

And what does the “gravy meter” (whatever that is) have to do with this?

He does say that he only takes the same number of entries (i.e. the same time period) for each time series. The difference between first and last is 0.13 mm/year – much less than the error bars of ~0.4 mm/year.

The increase of 0.43mm.year he talks about would be for time series of different lengths, and would include the recovery from the big 2010/11 La Nina event and is not surprising looking at the time series.

You can fly me to Queensland, and put me up for the duration, and accompany me to see Jean Palutikof and her colleagues, and we’ll even bring your “coastal engineers and scientists” along for the excursion so that everyone can get the best opinions.

Interestingly I spent some time yesterday averaging monthly MSLs for representative years for the Brisbane tide gauge eg the average monthly MSL from that data for say 1971, 81, 91, 01 11 or for 78, 88, 98, 08 etc.

What that showed was that sea levels according to that data have been relatively stable across a small range of fluctuation up until about 2003 or so. There is a persistent increase above the average range since then, most noticeably in the past few years.

On the basis of which, I’ll have to agree with Lovelock’s claim of an acceleration this century, based on the data from that particular tide gauge.

Minor caveat to that… While the average MSL does show an increase over the first decade of this century, it doesn’t get us to figures wildly out of kilter with the numbers for the early part of the record in the 60s.

If you eyeball that graph, you’ll see that MSL has trended down since the 60s, then risen again since about 2000. But not to a point substantially different from the 60s. I can’t comment on how that compares to earlier times as there is no date.

I have spoken to and corresponded with many of the scientists in her facility long before she was ever parachuted in and as she is only using the data they have collected, the only icing she would add to the cake is the gravy meter.

Which is all any of you have, let’s face it.

The fact that she was very active with the Met Office with her unpleasant emails with Phil Jones regarding providing FOI to Climate Audit, do not augur well for an unbiassed attitude.

It is interesting that since she left, the Met Office have down graded their alarmism on GW and now say that by 2017 temperatures will have remained the same for about 20 years.

Their weather reports are more realistic in acknowledging the cold weather, too.

Paying your fare and accommodation for us to meet with her would seem to be to the advantage of the gravy meter specialists.

Griffith U have been all over this problem and are among the people I mention above who can’t show SLR here.

Why don’t you just talk to these experts yourself and see if they have any of their own obs?

There are also SL scientists at GCCC who who have written papers [linked on this thread] on local SLs who you can also contact and quote.

If you’re not prepared to talk to the real, involved business people and residents, why don’t you at least talk to these boffins you obviously feel more at ease with and provide some genuine debate on actual happenings instead of just quoting motherhood and the gravy meter.

“Climate Audit” is a political lobbying group led by a mining-stock promoting crank called McIntyre whose FOI requests were a deliberate campaign of harassment designed to honest impede scientists in their work.

Gravy train? Look no further than Climate Audit’s source of funding and the political nature of their work.

Know this feller do you chek?
Dr Peter Helman
Senior Research Fellow
Griffith Centre for Coastal Management
Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland
You can prove I haven’t been in touch with him over SLs, can you?

The point is Spanky, to back your rather late in the day claim that you have, and the relevance of your claimed ‘correspondence’. At the moment it merely looks like nothing more than a copy’n’paste from an ‘our staff’ page. presented with a big dollop of affrontedness.

And your story has been curiously changeable over the years – from tale of the wall on the Nerang – until that was shown to be subject to other factors when you chaged it to Moreton bay with its sunken pier and flooded lawns, neither of which had been mentioned prebiously. None of it has the ring of veracity about it, Spanky. Including random staff lists.

Darrell Strauss Phd does not seem to support Spangeled Dongle’s hare brained drivel:

“Coastal communities in the Gold Coast, Australia, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, considering
their exposure to changing sea levels and storms, the sensitivity of the sedimentary system, and the current
capacity to respond to future challenges. In this paper we assessed the overall vulnerability of Palm Beach, a
Gold Coast suburb, by (i) modeling extreme storms under future sea levels (ii) modeling the response of the
beach to extreme storms under future sea levels (iii) assessing the level of adaptation of coastal management and
the adaptive capacity of the coastal community. Results show that sea level rise can trigger higher storm surges
and extreme erosion events and that the current level of adaptation and adaptive capacity is still insufficient to
cope with such challenges.”

“The assessment is based on the current situation and on two
scenarios of sea level rise: 0.5 m by 2050 and 1 m by 2100.”

Peter Helman is similarly on the punblished record as strongly supporting the consensus on sea level rise.

This is why I am so curious to hear what these two men said to Drongo. For some peculiar reason Drongo didn’t think to include such information when he first referred to each of these scientists, and he’s since been rather quiet on the matter.

Perhaps Drongo equates being “in touch with [them] over SLs” as being the same as either telling these scientists that they are wrong, or that they told him that the consensus is wrong.

Naturally this will all be cleared up soon when Drongo returns and carefully explains himself, with references to times and to places and to what occurred. Oh, I forgot – Drongo never provides any evidence with which to support his claims, and he never pays any attention to what others say if the saying disagrees with his narrative…

This Dr Peter Hellman?:“When Dr Peter Helman lay in bed at night in his beachside home in Suffolk Park 15 years ago, he could feel the house “wobbling” at night on its sand base, as the sea pounded the shores nearby.

“When there was a big swell, the coast seemed like jelly,” Dr Helman said. “I thought ‘my house won’t survive a big storm’.”

That was when he decided to sell up and move to higher ground. He bought a house on a large lump of bedrock at Broken Head, 300m from the sea, but now he’s moving on from that too.

“The whole coast is being eroded by rising sea levels,” Dr Helman said. “Headlands will be shaved off and estuaries will fill up. Living on the coast is not sustainable.”

He tells me the beach where we are sitting now at Broken Head would have once been 20 kilometres inland; that old sand dunes exist in inland Byron Bay and that the sea will again go inland.

“You don’t need to have a PhD or believe in climate change to realise that the sea levels are rising,” he said.

Two years ago, Dr Helman completed a six-year study of severe storms on the east coast of Australia for his PhD in Resource Science and Management at Southern Cross University, and the results should send strong messages to people living along the coastlines of Australia. His research documented 200 years of weather events, their frequencies and their effects on the coastline”..

Drs Helman and Strauss’ names were supplied to show chek that I have been in touch with GU scientists over local SLs in recent years.

To call the lie on what he said.

I have said before that GU, even before the advent of Dr Jean Palutikof [who is also an alarmist from her pedigree] only believe the gravy meter when it comes to SLs.

There are other coastal scientists from Qld Marine Services and GCCC who are more sceptical on local SLs than GU.

I have told you Ds many times over the last couple of years that I have many benchmarks WRT local SLs but you only choose the ones that suit your convoluted arguments and conveniently ignore the more straight forward ones.

Coincidently, at prersent, Moreton Bay is being “inundated” by ex tropical cyclone Oswald that is predicted to cause extensive flooding at this mornings big tide.

This tide is ~ 20 cms lower that the HAT of the 12th Jan but the surge is supposed to far exceed that.

This constitutes one of the “hills” in the billiard table principle which essentially means that our locality will possibly have the highest SLs on earth this morning so let’s just see how that compares with previous years.

There are other coastal scientists from Qld Marine Services and GCCC who are more sceptical on local SLs than GU.

Two questions:

1) Why haven’t you mentioned the “more sceptical” scientists months or even years ago, if they support your case?

2) If they’re “sceptical on local SLs”, are you saying that they either believe that it’s decreasing, or increasing at a high rate? You see, professional oceanographers acknowledge that sea level rise around Brisbane is only slightly positive, relative to that which is occurring elsewhere around the planet, so your whole issue about the magnitude of sea level rise in your area is a straw man anyway.

It’s worth noting though (yet again) that even this slightly positive increase in sea level still refutes your claims, especially as you claims are not accounting for confounding factors.

I have told you Ds many times over the last couple of years that I have many benchmarks WRT local SLs but you only choose the ones that suit your convoluted* arguments and conveniently ignore the more straight forward ones.

You think that we’re ignoring “straight foward” sites that you’ve mentioned “over the last couple of years”?! Excuse me, but you are seriously rewriting the history of this this and the previous, related threads.

Besides the river wall which is the only site to which you’ve been referring for most of the last three years, you only raised the Cleveland Point lighthouse lawn on the 14th of December last year – that’s only just over a month ago – and you only raised the subject of slipways at some vague location (I don’t recall if you subsequently named it, but if you did you’re welcome to supply the link) on the 13th of January, just two weeks ago. That is nothing in the span of a bebunking of your three year old claim, and anyway we’ve hardly been “ignoring” them, as the many recent comments from us on this thread attest.

And if you have raised other sites for serious discussion prior to December, please feel free to link to them. I don’t mind being corrected – although if your response is the same as it always is when I invite you to link to posts that contradict my statements, you won’t be posting anything at all…

And your (very recent) “straight foward” sites are subject to most of the same confounders as your Nerang River wall – you just keep ignoring those factors – as if ignoring them will somehow make them magically disappear.

Coincidently, at prersent [sic], Moreton Bay is being “inundated” by ex tropical cyclone Oswald that is predicted to cause extensive flooding at this mornings [sic] big tide.

This tide is ~ 20 cms lower that the HAT of the 12th Jan but the surge is supposed to far exceed that.

Meaningless blather. You are yourself admitting that the tide is not a king tide, so what does its lower height mean in your story?

And even if you account for its “~ 20 cms lower” peak, where is your actual data that lists and accounts for each of the factors that can affect tide height at Moreton Bay, or anywhere else?

We keep asking you for the weight of the elephant in the room, and all you can respond with is that its tail points down and has a fluffy bit on the end.

This constitutes one of the “hills” in the billiard table principle which essentially means that our locality will possibly have the highest SLs on earth this morning so let’s just see how that compares with previous years.

Right, answer us this: how do you know that your alleged high king tides from the 1940s and the 1960s/70s are not just more transient “hills” on your “billiard table”? Why were they permanently reflecting sea level then, but they’re temporary inconveniences that you can ignore now?

Answer us that.

[*It’s telling that you think that complexity equates with convolution. Just goes to show how little that dried black pea can process…]

Drongo seems to have suddenly gone quiet after quiet a Keysian run of bravado. Perhaps he needs to phone a friend.

Or perhaps the weather in his corner of the world is preoccupying him. Which begs the question – how many years of frequent severe weather events must he endure before he admits that global warming is actually affecting his climate?